Traffic safety signs are widely used to inform motorists and pedestrians of traffic conditions, right-of-way, and other information required for maintaining a safe and orderly flow of traffic. Although most traffic safety signs are permanently installed at particular locations and are made of relatively heavy durable materials such as metal or the like, the need exists for portable safety signs which may be temporarily placed where needed. Such portable safety signs might be used, for example, at the site of an accident to warn oncoming motorists, or to indicate a temporary detour around a hazardous or unsafe roadway condition.
The weight and size of the typical permanent traffic safety sign makes such signs relatively undesirable for temporary or emergency applications. The typical diamond-shaped traffic information sign in a size larger enough to catch the attention of oncoming motorists at highway speeds is relatively large, e.g., several feet per side; conventional rigid highway signs of that size cannot easily fit in automobiles and other emergency vehicles, and are relatively heavy and awkward to manipulate.
In an effort to overcome the foregoing problem, prior art safety signs have been made of flexible fabric materials such as plastic mesh or a reflective flexible material sold under the trademark Reflexite. The desired background color and signage indicia are applied to the front side of the flexible material, and corner pockets are stitched to the back side of the flexible material at each corner. Elongated frame members engage these corner pockets and attempt to maintain the flexible sign in a substantially flat configuration when in use. The frame members are removed from the pockets when the sign is not in use, allowing the fabric material to be folded or rolled into a relatively compact package for stowing in an automobile trunk or a relatively small storage compartment of a safety vehicle.
Such flexible safety signs, while overcoming the weight and size disadvantages of conventional rigid signs, have proven less than satisfactory for various reasons. For example, the ends of the rigid supporting frame members can rip or tear the flexible fabric sign material as the frame ends are inserted or removed from the retaining pockets on the back of the flexible sign. Moreover, these flexible signs typically are supported by metal sign stands which tend to rip or otherwise damage the corners of the fabric sign material. The sewn-on pockets for retaining the frame members tend to provide a wrinkled or limp appearance at the sign corners, thus providing an unattractive or undesirable appearance which may detract from the desired attention-getting warning purpose of these signs.